THE ROSE -FISH AND ITS ALLIES. 



•59 



off-shore banks north of Cape Cod, where it attains its greatest size. A 

 specimen, brought in by one of the Gloucester halibut schooners, was 

 about two feet in length and weighed about fourteen pounds. Along the 

 Maine coast they are much smaller than this, rarely exceeding eight or ten 

 inches and the weight of twelve ounces, though occasionally growing to 

 the w^eight of one and a half pounds. 



In Scandinavia there have been recognized two species ; one, a large, 

 orange-colored form, inhabiting deep water, known to the Norwegians as 

 the "Red-fish" (Roed-fisk), and considered to be S. marinus {S. norwe- 

 .giciis) ; the other, a smaller species of much deeper color, called the 

 "Lysanger," and described by Kroyer under the name "6". vivipariis,'" 

 and by Ekstrom as " ^S". rcgulusy After the most careful study of all the 

 specimens in the National Museum, we have been unable to recognize 

 more than one species on our coast, and recent Norwegian ichthyologists, 

 among them especially Mr. Robert Collett, believe that the two Norwegian 

 forms are not actually distinct species, but that the smaller one is simply 

 a pigmy race which is especially adapted to live in the long, shallow fiords 

 of that region. Dr. Liitken, always conservati\-e, is inclined to believe 

 the two forms distinct, regarding the large fish of the deep water as the 

 primitive type from which the smaller littoral form has been derived by 

 development. According to the last mentioned authority, the two forms 

 have very different geographical distribution, S. viviparus inhabiting the 

 shallows in the vicinity of the Faroe Islands, Southern Sweden, Norway, 

 and New England, but unknown to Great Britain, Denmark, Finmark, 

 Iceland, and Greenland ; while S. mariiiits is found in Greenland and 

 Iceland and all the length of the Norwegian coast, in Spitzbergen, Baren 

 Island, on the coasts of Denmark, and occasionally in the north of 

 England and Ireland. Possibly, he suggests, it inhabits the deep waters 

 at a distance from shore, off the Faroe Islands and North America, but 

 that is not yet certainly known. S. viviparus, then, he declares, is a 

 form less arctic as well as more littoral. 



This subject is here referred to in the hope that additional observations 

 may be drawn out tending to settle the question whether or not there 

 are two forms of Schastes on the American coast. It seems, however, 

 improbable, since the physical conditions are so different from those under 

 which they occur on the other side of the Atlantic. 



The food of the Rose-fish consists, like that of its cousins, the sculpins, 



